Prize draws

The size of prizes in draws and giveaways can vary tremendously, ranging from vouchers worth just a few pounds, to property worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Many prize draws are held by companies who seek to boost sales of a particular product by offering the opportunity to be entered into a prize draw as a reward for already having made a purchase (and thereby incentivising you to make the purchase in the first place, since the offer is usually fairly apparent on the packaging). You’ll normally have to phone up, return an entry form, send an SMS or email your entry in order to be entered. You may also have to send in or retain proof of purchase, which could be a receipt, a voucher, or a series of tokens (as many require you to make repeat purchases).

Other prize draws are help by companies seeking to boost sales of a particular product by offering the opportunity to be entered into the free prize draw, in return for making a purchase.

An example of this is the Readers Digest Prize Draw, which sends out mailings to a cross section of the addresses on the electoral roll, using demographic targeting software to try and match up postcodes with the likely buyers of their products. There may be limitations to the number of times you can enter a competition per individual or household – where possible you should try to enter the maximum number of times (keep it within reason – don’t buy a thousand boxes of cereal just to boost your chances of winning a pair of cinema tickets),

The winners of a prize draw are normally picked out at random, and for larger competitions there are a number of draws, since all the entries cannot be fitted into a single drum. Competitions where you enter by SMS or other electronic means have the winning entries picked out at random by computer software. Other draws assign all entries a number and then select the winner in the same way. Most companies will use an independent judging organisation to pick the winners, to ensure impartiality, certainly for prizes of any major value.

There is no real way to guarantee a win at a prize draw, but here are a lucky 7 selection of tips to help boost your chances just a little:

1. Send as many entries as you can. Be sensible, don’t send thousands, but send more than one where permitted. Some companies use different entry addresses in the rules, depending on where you found the entry form. This is so they can monitor the effectiveness of the competition as a marketing activity in different formats. If you can find more than one address, you should send entries to each one.
2. Send entries from different people in your household or family members living elsewhere. Again, go up to the limits and don’t fall foul of any rules.
3. Stagger your entries. Don’t post all your entries in one go. If you stagger them, you may have more chance of spreading your entries throughout the total mix and not being all in one post-bag.
4. Spread your energy. Don’t dedicate yourself to one competition. Enter as many as you possibly can.
5. The more obscure the better. The less competition there is, the more chance you’ll have of winning.
6. Enter competitions with short deadlines. The less time there is till a competition closes, the fewer people that will enter.
7. Only enter draws where you want to win the prize on offer. This won’t help you win, but how frustrating would it be to finally win something only to find it’s something you have no wish to keep.

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